West Midlands Regional Research Framework for Archaeology, Seminar 7: Barker
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Material Culture
David Barker
Stoke-on-Trent City Council
David.barker@stoke.gov.uk
The importance of material culture in archaeology is self evident – artefacts contribute
to an understanding of site formation, to dating, to understanding the social and
economic situation of a site’s occupants, and help to determine patterns of trade and
marketing. The material culture of the modern period holds more potential in all of
these areas than that of earlier periods, and yet a true appreciation of this is still the
exception. There is still a reluctance within the archaeological profession to see the
period as one worthy of its attention and to accept that there is anything to be gained
from a study of later material remains.
Later material culture has tended to be studied by museum curators from decorative
arts or social history backgrounds; an ‘archaeological’ approach is still unusual and
there is a marked shortage of specialists in many areas. Without an archaeological
perspective, however, our view of later material culture will be coloured by that
which is preserved in museum collections, and by the aesthetically and socially biased
picture which they present. Later archaeological assemblages portray a very different
situation with, for example, refined ceramic table wares occurring in meaningful
contexts with the coarser wares relating to important backstage domestic activities,
such as storage, bread making, preserving, butter making, brewing, food preparation
and serving, which are rarely represented in museum decorative arts collections.
Of course, archaeological assemblages offer the potential to see the full range of
domestic material together – for example, glass ware (increasing in use throughout the
period as manufacture became easier and cheaper), tin ware (a serious alternative to
ceramics by the late 19th century), clay tobacco pipes, and so on. Assemblages are
also interesting for what is missing. Pewter, for example, was important in both the
home and the public house and is prominent in most probate inventories. In
archaeological assemblages, however, it is almost completely absent on account of its
recycle value. Other missing materials are likely to include ‘best’ ceramics which
would be used only on special occasions and table wares in metal (silver, or similar).
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These will be absent on account of their high monetary value, while less expensive
vessels and containers of horn, basketwork, treen and leather are unlikely to survive in
the ground.
A regional approach to material culture may seem irrelevant in an industrial age when
goods are mass-produced for a range of national and international markets, and when
the cross border and transmarine movement of commodities is taking place on an
unprecedented scale. Goods produced within the region are, we might think, no more
likely to be consumed within the region than they are further afield. However, we do
not know this, and it seems inconceivable that local and regional tastes and
preferences will not exist in a manner which can be identified in the archaeological
record. Paradoxically this could easily be checked, were it not the case that postmedieval deposits are frequently sacrificed in the search for what might lie beneath.
Where good later post-medieval assemblages have been analysed in the region (and
there are precious few of these) a strong ‘local’ element is clearly evident in the
coarse utilitarian earthenwares which were not threatened by the increased use of fine
earthenwares and stonewares for dining and drinking and by the growing dominance
of the ceramics industry of Staffordshire. The coarsewares continued, throughout the
18th and 19th centuries, to reflect ‘local’ manufacture, itself poorly understood for this
period.
We must start to consider the West Midlands region both as a producer and as a
consumer, and a major challenge is to view production and consumption as parts of a
single process, both driven by wider social and economic factors. Archaeology can
contribute to an understanding of the range of factors which influenced consumer
behaviour, such as fashion, price, practical need, the availability of alternatives,
proximity to the markets, proximity to centres of manufacture, and the impact of
improved road, canal and, later, rail transport. It is important to consider also the
means by which people acquired their material culture, whether from pedlars or
travellers, at markets or fairs, from specialist dealers or general retailers, from the
factory or workshop, or through inheritance or as hand-me-downs. For the later postmedieval period alternative sources of evidence may be available to help determine
this, and the influence upon the purchasing public of advertising, of catalogues, of
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manufacturers’ showrooms, and of books on household management, etiquette,
interior decoration and cookery must be considered.
With a wealth of documentary evidence for the period, there will always be a
possibility of relating excavated finds to individual households, or at the least to
clearly defined neighbourhoods. Good documentary evidence can help us to place
material finds more firmly into a meaningful context and to understand the range of
choices available to the individual and groups, and the reason for selecting one type of
material over another. Objects become more than just finds to be quantified,
catalogued and described; each has a defined role and a voice which has the potential
to support or change our view of past behaviour.
Unfortunately few groups of archaeologically recovered material of this period have
been properly analysed and published and consequently our knowledge of domestic
assemblages is limited in the extreme. There are only a few classes of material culture
which have received archaeological attention – clay pipes, glass ware (to a lesser
extent), and the products of the Staffordshire potteries are well-known
archaeologically from production sites, but domestic groups are few. Published
assemblages include a single c. 1770 pit group from Carver’s excavations in Stafford,
although these produced other good assemblages which also merit study, and a c.
1810 pit group from Haregate Hall, Leek, Staffordshire; both groups need to be reassessed. More recently a late 18th-century assemblage from Park Street,
Birmingham, has been written up for publication, and a report on a number of very
good early to mid 19th-century pit groups from Gaol Street, Hereford, is in
preparation. Other later post-medieval pit groups and similar have been excavated in
the region, but remain unresearched.
The West Midlands does not have inn clearance groups of the quality of, for example,
the King’s Arms at Uxbridge (c. 1785-1800) which has been published in PostMedieval Archaeology, but a smaller group of 74 MVE ceramics vessels, together
with glass bottles and clay tobacco pipes, was recovered from the site of the Royal
Oak in Eccleshall (deposited c. 1800) and has been written up for publication in this
same journal. A second group dating to c. 1830 from the Hartshorne Inn in Lichfield
is not published.
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The urban and rural labouring classes are poorly represented in the documentary
record, but have also been overlooked by archaeology. Very few examples of
archaeology being targeted at these groups can be cited for the region, but two will
suffice to highlight the potential here. Ford Green Hall in Smallthorne, Stoke-onTrent, is a 17th-century yeoman farmhouse whose fortunes declined in the 19th
century, when it was divided into a number of smaller separate dwellings. By 1871 21
people were living there, including labourers, a washerwoman, a master maltster and
an engine-driver. Excavations in the yard behind the house recovered a mass of finds
which provide a valuable insight into the lives and material culture of the occupants,
an important supplement to the evidence from documentary sources.
At Cote House Farm, also in Stoke-on-Trent, a research excavation has begun on the
site of a small and apparently poor farmhouse whose fortunes can be charted in
historical records. Here all classes of material remains have been found, dating from
the late 18th century to the 1950s, and representing every aspect of life and work on
this smallholding; this is an unusual and important assemblage of a type which could
be recovered from any number of later sites.
Archaeologists still think of material culture in terms of high status and low status
without always defining what is meant by status – social status, economic status,
occupation or available income? Faunal remains associated with meals, such as cuts
of meat, may reveal considerably more about a household’s means and preferences
than ceramics; the latter may have been used and discarded selectively with those
wares in day to day use most likely to appear in rubbish deposits, while the ‘best’
wares were used sparingly and rarely discarded; there is also the recognised tendency
to hang on to ceramics for a long period of time, which itself can present problems for
interpretation. However, there exists important evidence which may enable us to
determine the spend profiles on ceramics for individual sites, using Miller’s CC index
which is uses pottery manufacturer’s price fixing agreements for the period 1770 to
1885 to provide a framework for assessing the relative costs of different types of
ceramics during this period. This cannot necessarily be a definitive view, but it offers
a basis for understanding the changing nature of ceramic assemblages at a time when
over-production and falling prices influenced what types of ceramics were acquired
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by the consumer, and makes a detailed analysis of later ceramic assemblages all the
more important.
Archaeology cannot provide all the answers on its own, and in studying any aspect of
later post-medieval life it is important to draw upon the widest range of available
sources and to consult specialists from other disciplines. However, to get to this
situation it is necessary to have a body of archaeological data with which to work.
Considerable attention has been devoted to the study of the region’s industries, but
little thought has been given to the impact of their products upon the lives of its
population. It is time that the curators of the archaeological resource recognised this
need and ensured proper investigation of post-medieval sites and proper treatment for
later post-medieval finds.